


say it in just five words

by notcaycepollard



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: 5 Sentence Fiction, M/M, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Tumblr Prompts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-10 15:48:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6992068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a collection of <a href="http://notcaycepollard.tumblr.com/tagged/five-sentence-fic">five-sentence tumblr ask prompts</a> collected for posterity</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Okay, so this isn't exactly where he expected this conversation to end up._

“Hey,” Bucky says, sounding injured, “you’re the one who always keeps asking me if I _fucking remember_ , pal, now you’re saying I can’t turn it back on you?”

“No, I- that’s not- all I _mean_ is, you made it sound dirty, like it, I don’t know, like it was _a thing_ , you know it wasn’t a thing that time, not like that, Jesus Christ, Buck.” He glares at Bucky for a second, takes a deep breath, looks from Bucky to Sam.

Sam just looks amused. “No,” he says, “by all means, please keep talking, I had no idea that when I asked ‘hey so what was it like, before vaccines and shit’ I’d get the story of how teenage Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes wound up in bed together.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

_"No, seriously," Sam groans, rolling away from Bucky, "I hate you so much."_

“Nah,” Bucky shrugs, and he’s hardly even breathing hard, the fucker, maybe Sam should try doing cardio training with him instead of Steve sometime. “You love me, Wilson, just admit it.”

“Over my dead body,” Sam mutters, takes a moment to appreciate the view that is James Buchanan Barnes sprawled out buck-naked (pun very intended) on his stomach beside him, sheets rucked up and kicked down to the foot of the bed. Bucky cracks one eye open, fixes him with a slate-blue stare.

“That can be arranged,” he says, ominously, and then Sam’s pinned to the mattress by a hundred and ninety pounds of defrosted supersoldier, and maybe he  _will_ admit it, at some point, but right now he’s going to enjoy hating on Barnes just a little more, and see where that gets him.

 


	3. Chapter 3

_Bucky, who has gone very still, stays quiet for so long that it startles Sam when he clears his throat and says, voice soft but sharp, "Yeah, well, that doesn't change anything."_

Sam exhales in disbelief. “I just,” he says, “I just, I woke up with you in my bed, and that, you know, whatever, except this is normal for me now, somehow we’ve reached this place where you crawl in here around three every night, and i haven’t said anything, I figured maybe it was just a, a comfort thing, but, Barnes, it feels like it kind of changes something when I wake up like this with you spooning me.”

Bucky freezes again, and Sam sighs, lays his palm open-handed on Bucky’s lower back, waits for him to stop flinching before he strokes slowly up his spine to the nape of his neck.

“I don’t mind,” he whispers, quieter, “you _know_ I don’t mind, or I would have said, but you gotta admit-” 

“Doesn’t change a thing,” Bucky insists, mulish, but he’s relaxing into the touch, and he’s still tangled up with Sam, one leg flung up over Sam’s hip, and Sam feels it, the fleeting touch of lips brushed to his forehead, just as he slips back into sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

_Bucky's face does a thing, and Sam is struck by two painful thoughts: one, that he has never seen Bucky this visibly upset; and two, that he has no fucking idea what to do about it._

“You shouldn’t have- you shouldn’t have woken me up,” Bucky says after a minute or two of hollow, awful silence, and his voice is low and careful and resigned. Steve takes a deep breath, clenches and unclenches his fists as if he’s wishing he could fight this the best way he knows - he’s so good at fighting, Sam thinks distantly - and looks desperately at Bucky.

“I had to,” he says, “I _had_ to, we can’t just- we can’t just shut you away like this forever, Buck. It ain’t right.” Steve’s voice cracks on the last word, and Bucky’s throat works like maybe he’s gonna cry, and Sam’s ashamed to admit he wishes he wasn’t here. This is- this is _personal_ , in the worst way, personal between Steve and Bucky, and nothing he should have been involved in.

“That doesn’t change anything,” Bucky argues, “I’m still not safe, I’m _never_ going to be safe,” and Steve drags his hand over his jaw, looking older than Sam has ever seen him.

“Just take a few days,” he pleads, “a few weeks. See what it’s like. See if you can learn to live with it.”

“Tried that,” Bucky mutters, and it’s just- the defeat in his voice hurts like a physical ache in Sam’s chest. “You _know_ I tried that.” He stares at Steve, unblinking, and Steve stares back, and Sam sees the muscle in Bucky’s jaw tighten until the line of it is so sharp Sam feels like he could cut himself, and then, abruptly, Bucky looks at him.

“What about you,” he says. “What do you think.” It startles Sam; he raises his eyebrows, draws a breath.

“I…” he starts, and thinks about it. Wings ripped off. Shoulder damn-near dislocated. Being thrown across a room by his _face_ , that’s not getting old. Jumping out of a car on the freeway with nothing but Steve and his shield between him and the road. Bruises that didn’t heal for weeks. And then he looks at Bucky again, and sees the mute horror, the acknowledgment of it all and the fear that it’ll happen again, that he’ll never get to live something gentle or soft or full of sunlight and joy, and Sam looks him straight in the eye, tilts his head.

“Stay with us,” he says, and Bucky does.

**Author's Note:**

> jump into [my ask box](http://notcaycepollard.tumblr.com/ask) and prompt me a sentence.


End file.
